


High and Dry

by Arithanas



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Post-Coital Cuddling, Yuleporn, mixed metaphor galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 14:17:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5500427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arithanas/pseuds/Arithanas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is a shaky ground, and sometimes, not ground at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High and Dry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rekall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rekall/gifts).



> My gratitude to [Isis](http://archiveofourown.org/users/isis) for going beyond the duty with this beta work.

James thought he had it clear: Love was a maelstrom and intimacy became a way to avoid shipwreck.

If you are in love, you must toss your ballast overboard and furl your sails and hold the belaying pins with desperate hands, white at the knuckles, while the wind rushes in your ears and the wet touch of the sea drenches you, wave after wave.

Thomas, faithful to his habit of arguing every topic, made James rethink his situation. Not out of malice ―James was sure Thomas couldn’t hold an ill thought in his golden head—, but out of a greater love that cannot be sank by the touch of tremulous flesh, by the salty taste of fulfilled desire.

This was the first time alone in a room with a bed. Thomas took James by the hand and steered him to the bed with the same ease with which he used his words to guide James to achieve the purposes in his heart. There was never a hint of wicked persuasion, never a rushed word or a rough touch.

Until the date when James fell between Thomas’ arms, James had only known the hasty touch of men who, distraught by their desires, wanted to get the deed over with and forget all about it without delay. And James took whatever they have to offer because he was starving and aching. His lustful desires demanded satisfaction infrequently, but Thomas, he caressed his body as he had touched his mind. The touch was soothing and rewarding and James wouldn’t have asked for more.

Under all his refinement, Thomas was a demanding lover. He didn’t request James’ submission; he expected a passionate and wholehearted participation. James was eager to touch, to feel, to take and be taken.

When they kissed, James felt in his skin the jolt of an upcoming gale. Every sailor knows the tingling sensation that floods your whole body as the thunders gathers over your head, the same marvel that makes every hair of your body raise on end. James abandoned himself to the inevitable and let the current lead him to whichever paradise awaited him.

They met halfway down the plank, breathing into each other’s mouth, gliding on the whirlwind. No one bellowed the cry of anchors aweigh, but Thomas cut the cables and James sailed, full wing, to his whim.

Thomas gave James a wide berth to mind his bearing off, until reports arrived and announced everything was ship-shape and Bristol fashion, then he devoted himself to throw overboard whichever prudery James could have been harboring. It was obvious he knew the ropes as well as any captain who worth his salt. Thomas covered James, like foam over docks and both knew the assault was in the offing.

Not a bell sounded before James’ vessel was full to the gunwales. He thought he had battened down the hatches for the raid but he had miscalculated the drive of Thomas’ taut standing rigging could muster while thrusting toward the harbor, figurehead first. James had never felt more grateful for being broad in the beam, but Thomas’ and James’ are finally joined and the tide was high.

James got ready for the backwash. Thomas relished the force of the storm and renewed the heave. James, still feeling quite chock-a-block, gave his captain enough rope.

James fired a shot across the bows and Thomas, always so heedful, furled his sheets and set his course to plain sailing, lulling James with the safe and reassuring motion of the waves on the beach. Nonetheless, James knew how the wind was blowing and got ready to be on the crest of a wave again.

In no time, passion heaved away and seized Thomas again and they allow nature to take its course, until respite and serenity washed over them. Thomas caressed James’ neck and tried to resettle the long fugitive strands of James’ pony tail. James caressed Thomas’ chest, enjoying the safety that was a commodity he never experienced before but a part of him craved it; he felt tired but comfortable at the same time.

“You are smiling, Lieutenant,” Thomas said and put his fingers under James’ chin. “What’s in your mind?”

“I haven’t felt this relaxed since the first time I laid myself on a hammock between two banana trees.”

James tried to nuzzle Thomas’ neck, but those fingers guided him up and they shared a kiss. It was long and tender; the caress made him feel James all at sea and brought tears to his eyes, because that kind of caress was often dreamt of but never before achieved. Thomas wiped off the stubborn tear that refused to drop to James’ sunburnt cheek.

“I can imagine,” Thomas said slowly, “you have been missing being loved.”

“You can’t,” James chocked with his own sob, “for I not knew the feeling until this day.”

Thomas hugged James and spared a caress to that back as if he wanted to ease the weight on those shoulders.

“I love you too, if that brings you any comfort.”

James believed him, he would have believed that sea was potable if those words fell from Thomas’ lips. But Thomas was not free. Feeling between Scylla and Charybdis, between his need of being loved and the respect his wife was due; James made the question with an evident lack of enthusiasm: “Are you going to tell Miranda?”

“We have her blessing, by and large,” Thomas reassured the man between his arms and traced compact spirals on the broad back that supported his weight. “I wouldn’t dare to touch you without letting her know. You can ask her next time if you are worried about it.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” James couldn’t think of something more embarrassing than asking a proper English wife if she had given her consent to share her husband with a Marine officer of obscure origin with nothing good to say about himself.

“You would be surprised, but I’ll let you make your choice.”

“Much obliged.”

“In the meantime, I love you.”

James smiled and let his weight rest on Thomas’ chest. The words couldn’t make justice to the feeling, but he repeated them.

They were true after all.


End file.
